Creating the base cylinders

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Sometimes models don't need to start from complex shapes and operations in order to look detailed, in this chapter starting with this video we show that the humble cylinder can make complex looking parts of our model.

- When creating hard surface models,we don't always need to approach thingsin a complicated way.In fact sometimes we can break down the main bulkof a model, or even just a section of it,into primitives, which is exactly what we're goingto do in this particular exercise as we look to createthe respirator valve that we see in our referenceimage here.In fact, as we scrutinize this a little bit,we can see that it is, for all intents and purposes,made up of a bunch of cylinders.Now we do have this threaded piece herebut seeing as we already have one of those,we can simply create a copy and then add it in later.

Breaking this down a little then,we essentially have one, two, three, four, five separatepieces here, the big shape of which can, as we say,easily be created from cylinder primitives.After snapping our web browser to one sideof our view then, let's just frame our reference upso that we have a clear view of what we're goingto be creating.The first step of which in the create tab of thecommand panel will be to select the cylinder optionfrom the primitives list.

We can then click and drag in the view portto first of all, set our cylinder radius,which we lock into place by releasing the left mousebutton once we are done.After which we simply drag again on the mousein order to set the cylinders height.Again, let's left click to lock that into place,finishing with a right click that will exitthe creation process for us.Now we will probably want to make some changes here,and so let's hit the F4 key, and then first of allget rid of the height segment as we really don't needthem in this instance.

Let's also set the radius to a value of two centimeters.Now there's the base shape here is clearly meantto be wider than it is tall, let's set the heightto about 1.3 centimeters.Now the size value, we can set to 12 as we don't needquite this many, and then once done we can right clickin the view port so as to switch focus awayfrom the command panel, meaning we can then enablethe move tool, hold down the Shift key,and then click and drag upward in order to create a copy.

Now this second level looks in our referenceto be around about half the height of the first,and so let's set this to 0.75 centimeters.And then again, holding down the Shift key,left click and drag upward in order to createyet another cylinder.Now it looks as if there might be a little bitof a taper going on between these two cylinders,but that could be just a trick of the originalcameras lens, so now I'm going to leave it up to youand your artistic preference as to whether or notyou add that in there.

Of course, we could always use an FFD box to tapethis later on, again if we wanted to.This shape is of course definitely smaller,and so let's go with a radius of 1.7, and then lowerthe height to about 0.25 centimeters,which looks to be more or less what we want here.We do have yet another level to create,which again is considerably smaller sitting in the centeras it does.And so let's copy and set the radius to 1.2 centimeters.

Which again, looks to be giving us the basics of the shapethat we want.For the final cylinder, we will need to leave a bitof a gap where we have this threadedpiece of geometry showing.But then after copying, we can set this to bea tiny bit smaller, so a radius of one centimeter,and also add quite a bit of height,going for something like 0.7 centimeters,which nicely completes the setup of our basic outline,although we will want to press the M keyin order to open up the material editor,and then add our modeling material to all of the cylindersthat we have created.

In fact, we can probably create a more completeinitial setup here if we add a copy of ouralready created thread.Press on A to bring up our align tool,choose one of our cylinders to align to,and then in elements of object mode for the thread,delete any of the unwanted and unseen sectionsof the geometry.With the thread selected, let's also adjust the scaleso that it more closely matches what we seein our reference image.We could even delete more of the polygonsthat aren't going to be seen if we wanted to keepour poly count as optimal as possible.

Okay, now that we have the base of our respirator valvein place, we can move on to the next exerciseand start our modeling here in earnest.

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Released

1/4/2017

Hard surface modeling is all about designing man-made objects: machines, vehicles, tools, weapons, and so on. Because the edges and angles are distinct and the surfaces are typically smooth, there are many opportunities to use 3ds Max's built-in tools to make your modeling process more efficient. 3ds Max: Hard Surface Modeling Basics helps you learn the tools and techniques to model a high-poly mesh—in this case, an old deep sea diving helmet and shoulder guard—as quickly and efficiently as possible. The assets you produce as a result of this course can be used in games, product visualizations, and more. Join Joel Bradley as he shows how to set up your environment for maximum efficiency and use a variety of techniques to execute the final design, including spline modeling, welding, component modeling, extruding from primitive objects, cutting, and box modeling. Plus, learn how to use the power and flexibility of the modifier stack to refine your hard surface models.